“As the winds of austerity sweep through the country, winter is coming for academia,” Walter Russell Mead recently wrote (‘Academia’s Day of Reckoning Draws Nearer’). “Taxpayers and their representatives can no longer afford to supply blanket support to every academic venture, field, and practitioner.”Hats off to University o...

OCPA fiscal policy director Jonathan Small has long argued against expanding Medicaid as provided for under Obamacare. I commend to your attention his excellent new article in the Oklahoma Gazette (“Medicaid expansion is the new SQ 744”) in which he explains why common education, higher education and various other tax consume...

Dear supporters and friends of OCPA,For the past year, the minds and hearts of concerned Americans across the country have been concentrated on the presidential election. In the first term of the Obama administration, deficits were more than $1 trillion a year, the debt climbed to $16 trillion, and, when the needle moved...

Since the 2011 legislative session, the number of those calling for improvement to the state budget process has grown. According to reports by The Oklahoman, House Speaker Kris Steele has said, “There is room for improvement as far as the budget process is concerned,” and Senate President Pro Tem Brian Bingman has said, “We c...

The results of any election -- let alone those of an election of "historic proportions," as this election was so frequently billed -- can be mined for insights for weeks, months and years to come. It's unlikely, then, that what we consider the top 5 lessons of Tuesday night now will be what we consider to be the top 5 lessons...

I sat there and took it all in, eating one of the best burgers I have ever tasted (thank you, Bricktown Burgers!), great country music playing on the radio and a man a few tables over reading his Bible while waiting for his order. Behind me, two gentlemen prayed over their meals before they began eating. Friends, THIS is Okla...

When the Supreme Court issued its ruling this summer on the president’s health care law, we were reminded once again that Obamacare represents a clash of visions. As I pointed out at the time, birds of a feather flock together. Praise for the law and/or the rulingcame from the likes of the National Education Association, the ...

The left often likes to say that tax rates don’t matter, and that companies are indifferent to changes to taxes solely to increase revenue for government to spend. Champions of more government and dominant union power, those committed to a war on fossil fuels and energy producers, and lovers of regulation want us to believe t...

In case you missed the inaugural edition last week, welcome to "Thursday's Top 5," a new feature on the OCPA blog! Turn on the TV for any length of time in the evening these days and -- in addition to presidential campaign ads -- you're likely to see a commercial to advertise the Empire State as an ideal place to do business...

Of the criticisms commonly leveled at capitalism, none is more discordant than this one: "Capitalists are materialistic." Capitalists certainly concern themselves with the best possible allocation of scarce material resources, but that makes them economic creatures, not materialistic creatures. Capitalists also concern themse...

Oklahoma participants in Medicaid and the taxpayers who fund the program must be encouraged by a recent letter from U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn to Gov. Mary Fallin. Dr. Coburn has treated Medicaid patients and is one of the most knowledgeable state and national leaders on federal spending and the desperate need for restraint and red...

I’m glad you asked.Last week in The Washington Examiner, former state finance director Tom Daxon pointed out that Mitt Romney is someone who knows how to balance a budget. “You can’t be successful turning around failing companies, not to mention the Olympics, without knowing how to ferret out waste and then eliminate it. But ...

Welcome to "Thursday's Top 5," a new feature on the OCPA blog!In any election year, it's easy to conflate political battles with policy battles. As a result, it becomes tempting EITHER to contribute to snide remarks of political discourse OR to tune out important policy discussions because we're discouraged by the snark. That...

A new study of school personnel released today by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice lends credence to the oft-cited observation that public education is a jobs program for grown-ups. According to the study, “America’s public schools saw a 96 percent increase in students but increased administrators and other non-...

All of us at OCPA are still mourning the death of University of Oklahoma historian J. Rufus Fears, who died unexpectedly on Oct. 6. Dr. Fears served as the Dr. David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for Freedom Enhancement at OCPA.

A day after his death, one of Dr. Fears’s many devoted students confidently predicted on T...

Findings in the performance audit of the Native American Cultural and Education Authority (NACEA) leave no doubt that it’s time to cease more taxpayer funding for the NACEA, and that lawmakers were right to reject another bond proposal. OCPA has previously recommended the end of more taxpayer funds for the NACEA. The findings...

In this month's Perspective, Heritage Foundation experts Lindsey M. Burke and Stuart M. Butler meditate on the potential future of higher education. They write:One thing is certain: Tomorrow’s model is going to look very different from the current paradigm. Higher education appears to be on the verge of the same kind of mas...

It's worth noting, in the wake of three major national debates, that all four national candidates -- Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan – seem to think of themselves as superheroes. Among other predictions, they suggest that they themselves will create jobs, jumpstart the economy, achieve energy independence, ...

Last week Chris Edwards and the Cato Institute released the “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors 2012.” The report highlights governors and the policies they are implementing in their respective states. As the report shows, governors across the nation are providing pro-growth opportunities. Some governors are at ...

As The Oklahoman recently noted in an excellent editorial, tuition and fees in Oklahoma continue to skyrocket. “In-state tuition and fees at OU in 1980 were $1,713 (adjusted for inflation). Today, they're $7,340. At OSU, tuition and fees jumped from an inflation-adjusted $1,677 to $7,441 today. That's an increase of more than...